By EUNICE WONG

Michael Kahn was a 5-year-old Brooklyn boy when his mother, a Russian immigrant, began reading him Shakespeare before he went to bed. "Not the Charles Lamb [Shakespeare stories]; she actually read me Shakespeare," he tells me. "She read me Shakespeare and the Bible. She cut out all that she thought were the sexy parts of the Bible. My mother didn't think there were any sexy parts in Shakespeare."

I'm talking with my former acting teacher in the lobby of the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C., where he has been the artistic director since 1986. It is a bright, high-ceilinged space normally full of patrons sipping wine and reading programs. Now it's cluttered with sewing machines, half-finished costumes, ladders, and cables for tech rehearsals of Michael's new production of Love's Labor's Lost.

Michael's mother probably never suspected that her little boy would grow up to become one of the nation's most dynamic and influential directors of Shakespeare's plays. And Michael's productions, perhaps to her chagrin, would be very sexy.

He directed his first play, Humpty Dumpty, in the second grade. "I have always wanted to be a director, always. I was an only child, and I was bossy. I wanted to be in charge," he laughs.

At a party in his honor held in May, Michael Kahn said a few words to the guests. (Photo by Nan Melville)

A tall, magnetic man with an arresting gaze, Michael Kahn was in charge of the Juilliard Drama Division from 1992 until May 2006. He has been an original faculty member since the division's inception in 1968.

"I'm very proud that the Drama Division has continued to evolve," Michael says. That evolution under his leadership includes the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program, established in 1993 and presently under the direction of Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman, and the Artist Diploma Program for Theater Directors (currently on hiatus), introduced in 1995, which has been headed by Michael Kahn, JoAnne Akalaitis, the late Garland Wright, and Andrei Belgrader. Michael is also responsible for a much greater ethnic diversity in the Drama Division, literally changing the face of the student body. The headshots of the graduating classes reflect cultures from all over the world: African-American, Australian, Brazilian, Canadian, Chinese, Filipino, Guatemalan, Indian, Japanese, Kenyan, Korean, Native American, Thai, and Trinidadian, among others.

"There was money given by the Lila Acheson Wallace Foundation for playwriting," Michael explains, "so what my predecessor had done was put that towards one playwright-in-residence. I thought, why don't we take that money and establish a playwriting program, because what we had was one playwright who got a big grant … So I asked John Guare and Terrence McNally to start, and they did; then, after a year, Marsha and Chris came in. And afterwards I thought we should have a directing program so we could really create relationships with playwrights, directors, and students. As for diversity, I've wanted a color-blind-whatever-you-want-to-call-it company my entire life in the theater."

Drama students Will Pailen (left) and Sean Davis get some pointers from Kahn during the 2004-05 school year. (Photo by Jessica Katz)

After 14 years as the Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division, Michael has let go of that position to focus his energy on the Shakespeare Theater Company, which will be building a new theater complex, the Harman Center for the Arts, as part of its mission to be the nation's leading force in classical theater.

Michael will still be returning to Juilliard to teach the third-year acting class, a crucible and touchstone for many who have passed through the program.

He has always had parallel careers. It is a balancing act he thrives on. He credits his work at Juilliard with restoring his passion for Shakespeare. "I didn't want to do Shakespeare after," he says, refering to the years he was the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Conn. "But after having worked with Juilliard students on Shakespeare, I thought maybe there is something I know now that I didn't know before, things I want to say. I discovered a way of understanding a Shakespeare text from moment to moment from working with these young people, rather than from concepts, and it was making Shakespeare come alive for me in a very particular and specific way. I developed a tremendous enthusiasm and curiosity that I thought I had lost."

On the evening of May 30, 2006, students, alumni, and faculty spanning the 38 years of the Drama Division gathered in the Juilliard Drama Theater to honor Kahn.

The radiant Marian Seldes, a former faculty member and renowned actress, was among the first to speak. She said to Michael from the stage: "You taught me how to teach … You literally seemed to invent the program, and when we all got stuck you'd find the way, you'd open the door, and that's how you are with the students. I envy all your students, except that I am one."

Michael Barakiva, a graduate of the directing program, recalled sitting in on Michael's acting classes: "I remember wishing that I had Michael's eyes. Not just so that I could see the scene as he did, but also so that I could see what it could be, and figure out the shortest possible route to get there. This vision, the ability to see possibilities, lies at the heart of direction."

Then Stephen Belber, a playwriting graduate, got up to speak. "The [playwriting] program has changed the landscape of contemporary New York theater," he said, listing playwriting alumni who have recently had or will soon have a show in New York: Julia Jordan, David Lindsay-Abaire, Adam Rapp, Julia Cho, Daniel Goldfarb, Tanya Barfield, Ron Fitzgerald. "And Proof, I believe, is still playing in Tibet somewhere," Belber cracked at the ubiquitous Pulitzer Prize-winner by David Auburn, his former classmate. The audience laughed. He then turned to Michael. "It's an amazing legacy; you have changed a lot of people's lives and I know I speak for every writer who's been through this program that we will never forget it, never stop recognizing how much you have literally changed our lives and gave us the permission to call ourselves writers, and I thank you for that."

Again and again, Michael's students and colleagues spoke of his vital role in revealing possibilities to them—within the play, between actors, but especially possibilities within themselves. Just as important, Michael stresses, is facing these unexpected discoveries, pushing deeper into the unknown rather than turning back to habit.

"You opened up the endless possibilities of complex humanity, of human beings all the more glorious and challenging in our great classical texts," said Michael Hayden of Group 21. "I hope I never forget … that just as vocal, mental, and physical alacrity are essential for actors, so too is the courage needed to tell a personal story."

Elia Kazan, one of Michael's great influences, wrote in his manifesto, "The Actor's Vow": "The best and most human parts of me are those I have inhabited and hidden from the world." An actor might also say, "The best and most human parts of me are those I have inhabited and hidden from myself." As Michael's student, I know he sees when we, his students, are hiding from ourselves. He knows how to extract the secret parts we've tucked away even from our own sight, the truth knotted up inside with the confusion, anxiety, human dishonesty, and posturing.

Near the end of the evening, Seth Numrich, a current student in Group 36, read a speech that Michael gave at the Juilliard convocation of 1970: " The only way to [learning one's craft] is a daily series of encounters with yourself … And most of you know by now … that these encounters are often painful. You will experience terrible difficulties, you will become angry, you will become bored, you will have moments, days of self-doubt and many of you will want to stop there, to go on to something else ... But it is precisely at that moment when you must have patience, where it is tremendously, vitally important … [I]t takes 20 years at least to make an actor and that is sometimes difficult for my students to understand when they want all their answers in the first weeks of class. It's hard to tell them that they don't even yet know all the questions … It will take years of working and performing, together with years of living and experiencing, to help do that …

"And why should we bother? … Art provides alternatives to our experience and alternatives as experience … And, for me, it is not only the work of art itself that provides this experience, but also the doing of it both as participant and spectator … When I am excited and moved by a play (those rare times) … I was moved not only by the playwright's vision and insight into our (my) life but also by the joy I felt at seeing a great performance … which caused me to celebrate the possibilities of man."

The possibilities of man. This thread continues to run through Michael Kahn's life. Thirty-six years after addressing the Juilliard class of 1970, Michael speaks to me in the lobby of the Shakespeare Theater about the same unchanged passion: "It makes you proud of being a human being, because you can see human beings doing something really wonderful. They're doing it right in front of you. It's immediate, it's one human being to another human being. You celebrate in watching the performance. You celebrate the skill, talent, and ability of the human being to do something."

This passion is the same spark that ignited the imagination of a young boy whose mother read him Shakespeare at bedtime, laying the bedrock for a remarkable life.

Eunice Wong is a member of the Drama Division's Group 28. She recently won the 2006 Helen Hayes Award for outstanding lead actress and spent the summer in Kyrgyzstan developing a new play and living with Kyrgyz nomads.